With the widespread adoption of broadband networks, various consumer electronics devices that support network connectivity are being marketed. Examples of such devices include personal computers, hi-fi stereo shelf units and personal video recording (PVR) devices with Ethernet connections, and portable devices such as MP3 players that connect to a network via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) to retrieve music files over the network. Also available are DVD players with built-in Ethernet connections that facilitate the retrieval of video files over the Internet. The players decode the retrieved video files for viewing on a television set.
Some network-enabled devices, from DVD players to refrigerators, are capable of being accessed remotely via the Internet. Many of these devices are designed to store and play media files, e.g., a personal video recorder is to play video files and an MP3 player is to play music or audio files. As memory prices decline, these devices are being made capable of housing increasing amounts of internal storage.
Consumer product manufacturers are hopeful that users will take advantage of home networking to share media in their homes.
Manufacturers of large storage systems are moving to create systems that adopt a virtual storage paradigm. A goal is to have vendor storage products interoperate and be interchangeable for enterprises supporting multi-terabyte databases.